Enola blinked his giant eyes, a long, languid motion. His head was much bigger in proportion to his body than a human’s; crest and all, his head was more than four feet long, his oil-slick eyes bigger than footballs. “I KNOW YOUR KIND, I HAVE STUDIED YOU BEFORE. BUT I HAVE NOT STUDIED YOUR LANGUAGE. I’M NOT SURE HOW MY ALGORITHM OBTAINED THIS LANGUAGE. I HAVEN’T STUDIED THIS DIALECT BEFORE.”

“I don’t know how you know English. I have to admit, I was wondering that myself.”

“PLEASE DON’T KILL ME, DEAR CLEVER CREATURE. NOT YET.”

“Is there anything I can do to help that doesn’t involve me touching you in any way?”

“I AM IN PAIN. MEDICATION WILL MITIGATE IT, BUT I MUST BE FREED FOR ITS MANUFACTURE.”

Kaveh frowned. “No. No, I don’t think I’ll do that.”

He took another slow breath and pondered his next move. His pie-in-the-sky goal had been to get Enola talking, and he had expected that to be the hard part. He hadn’t exactly prepared a list of questions and talking points. “The ‘medicine.’ What does it do to you?”

“IT NUMBS ME.”

“I see. And what does this numbing do for you?”

“THE ABILITY TO ENDURE THE LOSS OF MY SYMPHYLES AND THE EXPULSION FROM MY SUPERORGANISM, AND TO COEXIST WITH TRAUMATIC MEMORIES.”

Kaveh might have been projecting, but Enola’s description felt awfully familiar. A desperate craving for some chemical that could numb whatever demons were haunting him. Alien as it was, it was also as familiar to him as the feel of a light breeze on his skin.

Enola was going through withdrawal.

Kaveh started to ask a follow-up, but then a shadow fell over the chamber. The light in Enola’s iridescent eyes dimmed, and Kaveh turned to see the other one—Ampersand—blocking his exit.

He shot to his feet, instinctively putting his hands up. Ampersand approached him like he was a cockroach that needed to be swatted, but slowly so as not to spook him. The creature had his head down, the ridges above his eyes covering them in a way that made him look like a predator on the hunt, his eyes catching the sunlight from outside and blazing like a forest fire.

Kaveh backed away, trying to keep a good distance. He envisioned himself blurting, “I know you can understand me. I have a colleague on the East Coast that has these coordinates. If she doesn’t hear from me within the next ten minutes, she’s going to assume me dead and report this location.”

He shut his mouth. He couldn’t do that. That could endanger Paris.

“Cora sent me,” he said, keeping his hands up. “She wanted me to check on the situation. She’s at the Pechanga hotel, resting. She’s safe.”